I think the topic of "Questioning" in our reading class has helped me the most as a teacher to help my students with effective reading. I always seem to ask myself how I can make my students more involved and aware of their reading process, which has now lead me to encourage questioning. I used the strategy of highlighting in my advanced chemistry class this week. With so many in depth articles and readings that accompany such a class, my students often feel frustrated because its like reading o foreign language. The highlighting technique really seemed to help them to become aware of where they get tripped up during reading.
Many of the students are also realizing their strengths and weaknesses in their reading process. For example, one student made the comment that she has realized that she has a weak vocabulary in science. I encouraged her to not get frustrated and just to consult her group members, me, or even use her context clues to figure out the word's meaning.
In doing these types of activities, I have come to the conclusion that MANY of my students struggle with reading. And so few of us teachers have helped them to understand how to read in our content areas.
Whitney,
ReplyDeleteFrom all of your input in the classroom as well as this post I have come to the conclusion that it appears that you are an awesome teacher. You are so encouraging and willing to try new techniques that can help students. Your technique of assessing students deficiencies appear to be working. You may want to add one strategy called "Ask three then me." I use it in my classroom and it has been very effective. The students are encouraged to ask three of their classmates for clarity then ask me. Most often the students are able to ascertain the answer to their questions without asking me.
Students seem to struggle with vocabulary and will not ask the question,"What does this mean?" I have noticed that teachers are asking students what does a word mean? Most of the student will not retort,"I do not know what it is saying." Nor will they attempt to decipher its meaning. I like the strategy of dissecting the word to gain its meaning.Sometime I will ask the student to become a detective and look for clues to understanding the word. Looking for ways to use content vocabulary is becoming a lesson plan of a priority.
ReplyDeleteIt is no wonder that students do not understand text from their textbook when half the words are foreign to them and they have no desire to look them up in a dictionary. I have had students refuse to even look into the dictionary because they do not know where to start looking for the word. Mostly because their spelling is so bad.